I decided to do some experimenting with sight pin setup and what it would be like to set the first pin to 40 yards and a second pin at 60 yards. While shooting 3D or other target shooting, when time is not as much of a factor, picking and concentrating on the correct pin is less of an issue than when hunting. How many times in the heat of the moment has the wrong pin been used when hunting? On big game I have nearly made this mistake (though thankfully it’s never happened) but last elk season I did make the mistake on a grouse. Fortunately a grouse is small enough that it was a complete miss rather than what could have been a wounded an unrecoverable big game animal.
The idea behind using less pins, the first being sighted in at 40 yards, is to minimize the number of pins and thus confusion at the moment of the shot. I have almost always had my pins sighted in at 20, 30, 40 etc. and did so out of habit and not really thinking about doing anything different. There are always several discussions on various message boards lately about pin distances, the effect of arrow speed on pin placement and such. The goal of this article is to investigate an alternative to traditional pin placement.
For this testing I used the setup that I will be hunting with this year:
- 2010 Bowtech Destroyer 350, 67#, 30″
- NAP Apache Rest
- TruGlo Extreme Sight
- Carbon Express Mayhem Arrow Shafts
- FOBs and Fusion Vanes
This setup results in an arrow speed of 309 fps. To aid in making the graphs and charting with theoretical and actual data, I used TAP (The Archery Program) along with my exact specs.
To begin with I removed four of the seven pins from the sight to give me lots of space to work with as I didn’t want to have to worry about a pile of pins at the bottom of the sight ring. The idea is to clean things up; I also don’t want all those extra pins stacked up right above my level. Hunting in the Rocky Mountains necesitates having either an uncanny ability to hold the bow perfectly level on any ground condition or using a level; I choose the level.
Once everything was set up and looking ready to go, the bow was tuned (quick paper tune, then bare shaft tuning) and I headed off to the local range to shoot some long distances. I placed a single line of tape across the black part of the backstop and stepped back to 40 yards and shot a few of ends until I was satisfied that the pin was hitting dead on. Next I moved to 20 yards and used the now sighted in 40 pin and shot several times, taking measurements on each arrow to see how high they hit. The average came out to be right around 5 inches. The same was repeated for 30 yards with the average height above aim 3.5 inches.
At first I wasn’t quite sure this was right because my mind was wrapped around the traditional settings of pins and how the arrow arc behaved. My initial instinct told me that the 30 yard impact site would be a bit further down; what I had not originally considered is that when the 40 yard pin (instead of a 20 or 30) is used at shorter distances, the apex of the arc has changed because the aiming point is lower than the impact point. This is readily seen with this graph (the second graph is a zoomed in version of the first graph to better see what is happening at 40 yards and less):
When using a 20 yard pin at 20 yards, the apex is around 15 yards while using a 40 yard pin at 20 yards results in an apex between 24 and 25 yards.
One thing that is EXTREMELY important to understand is that because of the way an arrow arcs and because of the way that our line of sight is lined up with the intended impact site, shooting a 40 yard pin at 20 yards is nowhere near the same as shooting a 20 yard pin at 40 yards. In the former case my arrow drop is around 5″; if I use my 20 pin at 40 yards the difference is drastically higher, resulting in an arrow being nearly a foot low.
To further my little experiment I sighted the second pin at 60 yards to get an idea of what the sight picture would look like. I also sighted the third pin at 70 yards.
What does all of this mean when in the field hunting? That is the real question that I wanted to answer. First off it means fewer pins to worry about clouding the sight picture and having to pick the right pin. Many people, especially treestand hunters, will never have a shot opportunity past 30 yards and this exercise is meaningless in those situations. However, here in the west, whether in the Rocky Mountains or out on the plains hunting speed goats, shots past 40 yards and even out 60+ yards are common. With this particular setup I could put the first pin on the heart of a deer 20 yards away and double lung him (assuming proper shot execution of course!) If the deer was really 30 yards away and I mis-judged by 10 yards, I’d hit slightly lower, possibly at the top of the heart and bottom of both lungs. This is exactly why many top and pro shooters will say that if in doubt, aim long. Aiming long results in a smaller error than aiming short.
I in no way advocate not practicing yardage judgement as much as possible. Even though using a pin setup like this may help minimize errors in yardage and clean up the sight picture for some people, it is absolutely no excuse not to practice, and practice a lot, yardage judgement. It is merely one method of using a sight that may be a good choice for some people. Also, every person and every setup using this or a similar method will require the shooter to do their own footwork and to fully understand how their setup performs. Just because my setup shoots 5″ high at 20 when using a 40 yard pin does not mean that everybody shooting a bow around 309 fps will do the same. Variations in equipment, especially in arrow/fletching type and total arrow weight will cause variable results.
Is this system for you? Perhaps. It may be worth a try to see how it works for you and if it is something worth trying. If you do decide to try it, practice a lot to become familiar with the performance. Once you are confident in your setup, PRACTICE SOME MORE!
Good shooting to all and please post any results you may have if you try this out.
Note: This is a companion article to the Arrow Flight Fact or Fiction: One Pin to 40 Yards
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
This article inspired me to give it a try. I have a Sureloc single pin slider on my bow for 3-d shooting. I decided to give your suggestion a try. My hunting arrow was shooting at 330 fps so I set up the sight at 35 yards and felt very comfortable shooting out to 40 yards and under by just aiming center mass. It worked well enough that I killed a mule deer and a cow elk this year. Not accurate enough for my liking for 3-d, but works well for those large vitals on big game hunting situations. Thanks for the insight.
Kevin,
I’m glad the method worked out well for you and that you had good success with it! I won’t be using it for 3D myself, but I did like hunting with it and will continue to use it on my hunting setup
Mike,
At your DL & set up producing 309 fps the 40 yard set up for short pin yielded pretty good results.
What about someone like me delivering 251 (hvy arrow) or 279 (ligher arrow). Maybe a 30 yard short pin might be a better answer?
Took me a while to digest, but excellent, excellent experiment and reporting.
happy hunting, dv
DV,
I think this method would work well for about any setup; one key being to find that spot that you are comfortable with because every setup and every shooter will be unique. I did like the method well enough that I’ll be playing with it more in the future and trying it out at different arrow speeds. From your posted speeds I would guess that 30 would be a good place to start the pin at and I would definitely recommend trying it at 25 and 35 as well to see how it works for you.
By far the most important (as with any sight/bow setup) thing to do is to know your equipment and know it well! What ever pin placement anyone uses, they should practice, practice then practice some more with it until they know how it will perform without question. Good luck!
Being a tree stand hunter, I REALLY like this experiment. Sighting the first pin at 30 yards looks like a great alternative to the traditional 20 yard setting. By your charts, and with most faster hunting setups, the biggest difference in impact is only 2.5 inches high. In a hunting situation, that’s an acceptable amount. What really makes it nice is that with a 30 yard zero, arrows hit 2.5 high at 20 , but with a 20 yard zero, they hit 4 inches low at 30. That’s a gain in margin of 1.5 inches, or around 40%!! I will give this a try. Thanks for the idea!!!
Mike,
I’m glad you enjoyed the article and hopefully it will be of use to you. There will definitely be more on this subject in the future.
Mike,
Sounds like Jim Carmichael’s idea of sighting in your .270 2″ high at 100 yards to give a ma ximum “point blank” range on deer size game from zero to about 280? yards (you get the idea). One word of caution- beware the string jumper at the apex distance. If lucky will be a spine hit. Bill Winke has discussed string jumpers in several magazine articles and I once hit above the spine on a 10 yard shot that I couldn’t believe was possible. I also like using my evenly spaced pins as a range finding aid and can determine if a limb between me and the target will be struck, given enough time and a cool head.
Fortunately I’ve never had anything jump the string, then again, I don’t hunt whitetails! Having your shorter pins there to make sure you don’t swack a branch between you and the intended target is nice. When I shoot 3D outdoors I do use all the pins and it is very beneficial for that very reason; people in our club tend to really like bushes and branches!
Great article. I like to find ways to improve my effectiveness in the field and keeping things simple. As you have stated in the heat of the moment you want to be clear. Having less to process and deal with is always better. In this case limiting the amount of pins you would need.
Great article! I have been using this method for year except my first pin is 30 yards, With my set up my 30 yard pin shoots about an inch high at 20 yards so I felt there was no need to keep the 20 pin. Your tests quantified what I have been teaching for years. Let me know and I will share your results on my website.
Thanks
Rick
I get the zero at 40yrds to cover everything from 0-40, but how low will I be at 45yrds. Do I use the 60 yrd pin to cover 50?
Like wise 70 yard pin to cover ?
Could you send me the arrow flight screen shot so I can see the difference / drop between 50, 60, and 70yrds. I know each setup can cause drastic changes.
Do you know of a software I can use to see this and configure my setup in the application to see the flight of my paticular arrow.
Chad,
How a bow drops from 40 to 45 is completely dependent on each individual setup. You can see how the test bow in this article performed at distance in the first graph. For my hunting setup, I currently set the first pin at 40 and have additional pins at 50, 60 and 70 yards.
I have use bot TAP (The Archery Program) and OT2 (On Target 2) and both can give you trajectories. However, TAP hasn’t been updated in some time and I’m not sure how the future will fare for it.